Children's toys, and dolls, in particular, have a history dating back into antiquity. Generally, the technology surrounding the manufacture of dolls centers on creation of an attractive doll face, a miniaturized application of conventional clothier's arts, manufacture of a doll body using plush or other sculptural techniques, and the simulation of the hair with sculptural elements, fibers, or other techniques.
In the case of doll faces, the doll maker has a wide panoply of possible constructions and manufacturing techniques at his disposal. Traditional techniques involved the use of plaster-like materials to cast a doll face. After casting, the doll face was finished, usually using paying, the dye or other similar material to give the face a natural skin color.
As a rule, such cast doll faces include all the normal features of the figure stimulated by the doll. In the case of the human doll, the cast face would most often include the entire head, including well formed lips, teeth, cheeks, nose, chin, ears and forehead. Lives are often given a contrasting reddish color to improve the attractiveness of the face. Likewise, an air brush may be used to apply a patch of rosy hue to the cheeks. Sometimes, eyes are cast in finished form. If they are, the eyes are usually painted. Other times, the casting is made to accommodate a glass eye or an eye made of another material.
Hair is often molded into the doll head especially in older plaster doll heads. More recently, plaster has come to be replaced by plastic as this technology came into its own after World War II. Initially, hard plastics were used. The same then new polymeric technology also made synthetic hair fiber a practical alternative in the mass production of dolls. Typically, such fibers were mounted on a backing to form a wig, which could be glued to the doll head.
While soft rubber-like materials, injection molded into doll heads were seen at least as early as the mid 1950s, the traditional art doll face, made popular for centuries in plaster remained dominant in the marketplace for many years. Moreover, doll faces also retained, for many years, the relatively shiny finish of the plaster versions that preceded them.
In time, however, soft rubber doll faces and doll heads have become an increasingly important part of the market. These products have an increasingly realistic look and feel. Moreover, the nature of these materials has allowed the easier direct mounting of fibrous synthetic hair to the doll head, thus increasing realism. Likewise, recent products even present the possibility of fibrous synthetic eyebrows mounted to a doll's head.
While the ability of the technology to produce increasingly realistic dolls continues to grow, fashion has revitalized more traditional techniques and looks. One of the most enduring forms of dolls is the so-called "rag doll". Indeed, some of these products, such as the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls of our American colonial heritage, have never left us. Traditionally, such dolls were made of plain white linen, which changed to cotton when Eli Whitney's cotton gin made the short staple cotton of the American South a practical commercial product. Despite their homey look, with squarish or oval faces, yarn hair and embroidered facial features, the soft natural feel of the textile render the rag doll one of the most popular dolls in this country.
The increasing popularity of this doll today can be seen from the fact that of the versions of rag dolls have come to be marketed en masse. For example, one finds rabbit rag dolls in many toy departments during the Easter season. However, against the ever increasing realism of alternative doll technologies, rag dolls, despite their tradition and tactile and visual karma, simply do not appeal to a major segment of people.